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Sunday, January 24, 2016

Snow Church (Sunday Journal)

I got the e-mail around nine o clock Saturday night: no church due to snow and freezing rain. Instead of staying up late to finish my Relief Society lesson on "What Lack I Yet?" I stayed up late mixing the dry ingredients for gingerbread pancakes.
Sunday morning, we let ourselves sleep in past seven. The kids were still awake, so I got ready for "church" right away, from my dangle earrings to my bow-toe ballet flats.
I put on my floral apron and made gingerbread pancakes with lemon-buttermilk syrup, while T took his dad for a walk to investigate the snow.

Over breakfast, the scientists in the family got into a discussion about how many states of matter there are. Turns out: seven, if you're including the hypothetical lab-produced states of matter.

After breakfast, we encouraged the children to clear their dishes and get dressed for the day. Two boys put on full suits, another stubbornly stayed in his pajamas.
When they heard we were having church at home, the kids got quite animated trying to plan it out:
"Where will we have sacrament meeting?"
"Can I be the Primary President?"For church, we:watched a general conference talk by President Uchtdorf (child still wearing pajamas disappeared during this portion and had a couple books confiscated for the remainder of the day)

practiced the Primary song for January 2016, with the CD
had a lesson from our "Primary President" out of the Behold Your Little Ones Manual, including a coloring page

Had three or four prayers and sang "I Am a Child of God" lots of times
Church lasted a whole hour and ten minutes. Since the pictures don't show any complaining or quarreling, we'll just pretend that part didn't happen, okay?
Well, after church, Cory offered to take the kids and theirs sleds to a small hill nearby before the snow melted. I was feeling doubtful about the Sabbath-appropriateness of this, but after spending five winters in a sub-tropical climate, the kids are really excited about snow, and I didn't have it in me to object.
I stayed home with Baby Q. We cooked pork and egg drop soup. Four of the five kids loved it, and another said it made her feel queasy.

After lunch, Q took a nap, and S practiced "Book of Mormon Stories" on the piano. I ran the dishwasher and started rolls in the bread machine while Cory took a nap. By that time, I wasn't feeling well. Since Q was still sleeping, I thought I might try a nap myself. I had barely laid down when we heard him crying. Cory offered to get up with him, and I surprised myself by sleeping for an hour and a half.
I came down just as the bread machine was finishing, so I formed dinner rolls, talked with my husband, and wrote in my online journal. Cory put vegetable burgers on the griddle, and made a triple berry banana smoothie. I reheated the leftover apple celariac mash, and gave Baby Q a pickle to sample. He was much more accepting than last time.
After dinner, I got three of the children to do a five minute chore, then we gathered for Family Home Evening, part 1.

Opening Song: "I'm Trying to Be Like Jesus"
Opening Prayer
Announcement: School tomorrow is on a two-hour delay
Lesson: I began explaining the scripture "line upon line, precept upon precept," then we talked about building with Legos. It would be hard to get a big Lego project, and only have the finished picture to look at, with all those little Legos in bags. I had K get up and explain how he had to do one little step at a time to build the space rover he got for Christmas.
I showed the picture of Christ with the rich young ruler, and summarized his story.
Then we briefly discussed the General Conference talk, "What Lack I Yet?" We challenged the children to pray about that tonight. I'm not sure that any of them did, but we tried to encourage it.

The kids are all in bed now.
It's weird. I expected it to be easier to have more family quality time today, since we wouldn't be spending three or more hours at church, but looking back on the day, it doesn't feel like that.